Marketcraft or Mayhem

Chris Hughes, President Trump, and the Fight to Keep the Economy from Crashing Itself

Last night, under the marble arches of the New York Public Library, Chris Hughes sat across from Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway and dropped a truth bomb that has been quietly building in the background of American life: the economy is not slipping. It’s being dismantled — deliberately, from the inside out.

He didn’t bury the lead. He didn’t float platitudes. The premise was sharp, and the moment demanded it.

“Markets don’t just take care of themselves. Capitalism needs to be cultivated.”

Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook turned political economist, wasn’t there to soft-sell. His new book, The Rise and Fall of American Marketcraft, is a hard confrontation with a crumbling fiction: that markets are neutral, self-regulating forces of nature. They aren’t. They never were. And the people who pretend otherwise aren’t protecting freedom — they’re engineering chaos.

Especially now.

The Fed, the Dollar, and the Power Grab

We are in a live experiment. President Donald Trump, now deep into his second term, is openly threatening to remove Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — a move not only unprecedented, but illegal under the Federal Reserve Act. Markets are reacting. Bond yields are spiking. Confidence in the dollar is thinning.

“The dollar used to be backed by gold. Now it’s backed by trust. And we’re watching that trust erode, fast.”

Hughes didn’t flinch from the danger. When a president can order the central bank to cut rates on command — or face removal — we no longer have an independent monetary system. What we have is a command economy in a gold-plated disguise.

“This isn’t just a bad policy moment. This is a constitutional one.”

And Hughes made it clear: the destruction of institutional independence — at the Fed, at the FTC, at the Department of Justice — isn’t accidental. It’s tactical. It’s part of a broader shift to consolidate power outside the reach of regulation, accountability, or democratic checks.

Tech Billionaires, Power, and the War on Institutions

Then Hughes turned the lens inward — onto the tech world he helped create. When asked why so many billionaires seem to be actively undermining public institutions, he didn’t hesitate.

“It’s not just about making more money. It’s about power. It’s about wanting to be the one who shapes the future — without interference.”

And he called it out by name. That infamous image of Zuckerberg standing behind Trump wasn’t just awkward optics — it was an alignment of interests.

“They want to be marketcrafters. But without democracy. Without institutions. Without the public.”

He described how Facebook and others, in their early years, depended on government funding, infrastructure, and legal frameworks. But now, many of those same founders are financing lawsuits, lobbying against antitrust, and attacking agencies designed to keep markets fair and open. It’s not just hypocrisy. It’s an effort to replace the state with the platform — and remove any structure that might say no.

This Isn’t Theoretical

The brilliance of Hughes’ analysis is how practical it is. He’s not waxing nostalgic about the New Deal or offering a utopian vision of Scandinavian social democracy. He’s focused on now. Housing. AI. Inflation. Institutional collapse.

On housing, he points to the sharp rise in cost-of-living since the pandemic. Americans now spend a third of their income on shelter, with little relief in sight. He wants a federal housing construction fund, standardized rules for modular development, and an industrial policy that supports supply — rather than just nudging it along with zoning tweaks.

“You can’t just make it easier to build and hope it happens. We’ve seen that fail. You have to craft the market — aggressively.”

On AI, he criticizes the U.S. approach as “muddled and hands-off,” leaving critical infrastructure and innovation in the hands of a few private companies. Meanwhile, countries like China are building public compute capacity and directing AI development in the national interest.

“We talk about AI like it’s the nuclear race, but we’re treating it like a software launch.”

And on climate, he praised the Inflation Reduction Act — but said plainly, it’s not enough. We need not just subsidies, but institutions. Ones with a mission, the authority to act, and oversight from Congress — not billionaires.

Reclaiming Marketcraft

In one of the night’s most powerful moments, Hughes was asked whether markets can be saved — whether there’s any path forward that doesn’t lead to plutocracy on one end or collapse on the other.

He said yes. But not without work. Not without new public leadership. Not without a fight.

“We’re not in a free market era. We’re in a power era. The only question is whether that power will be accountable — or completely untethered.”

That fight, he argued, starts with reclaiming the tools of marketcraft — the ability to shape economic outcomes with purpose, equity, and institutional strength. It doesn’t mean micromanaging or overregulating. It means having the capacity to respond, to direct, and to protect.

“Markets are not delicate flowers. They’re systems. And systems either work for people — or they work for power.”

The Garden Metaphor That Isn’t Cute

Hughes closed the conversation with a personal metaphor that landed with weight. Growing up in North Carolina, his dad used to force him to weed the family’s vegetable garden every summer.

“It was not peaceful,” he said. “It was relentless. Bugs. Dirt. Rotten tomatoes. But it had to be done. Or nothing grew.”

That’s what marketcraft is. Not ideology. Not perfection. Just maintenance. Labor. The public act of tending to an economy so it doesn’t choke itself on weeds or collapse under its own neglect.

And right now, Hughes warned, the people with the power to shape markets are either asleep, bought off — or swinging a hammer at the very institutions holding it all together.

Chris Hughes’ book is a necessary read. But last night’s talk made one thing even more clear: this is not just a debate about economics. It’s a test of whether we still have the political courage to hold power accountable — and whether we still believe markets should serve people, not just those who already own them.

You can follow Hughes on Blue Sky @c-hughes.bsky.social